Keeping Things Cool (Sirimoto Oil Cooler)

The race track is like our 2nd home.

It’s fun to be at and always makes us happy. We do what we can to find ourselves there as much as possible.

More importantly, the track is a tool in our product development arsenal to make sure we get you the best and most thoroughly tested Honda performance parts for the CivicX. We know that parts that can deliver on the track will deliver on the street.

Knowing that our 2018 Civic SI will find itself on many road courses and race tracks over the coming years it was important that we started early to prepare the car to be able to take the abuse. We knew we needed to add the provisions and parts to make a reliable car both on track and on the street. This starts with heat management.

The quests to keep temps under control lead us to the guys at Siri Moto. Being some track rats themselves, the team over there took it upon themselves to develop an easy to install bolt on oil-cooler kit for the 10th generation Civic. They offer a complete kit that includes everything from the braided hoses, brackets, oil pedestal, hardware, and heat exchanger along with handy AN wrench for install. There kit was also pretty cool in that the new adapter comes with provisions for NPT fittings so you can mount up an oil pressure and/or oil temp gauge. We found that very cool and super useful. We are now able to capture that data when we need it.

Out of the box the kit is very nice.

As mentioned, it comes with everything you need including hardware and fittings — all the way down to some Loctite they recommend to secure the oil filter pedestal. We really like this aspect because it means no running to the hardware store mid-install.

The 19 row core is a great size and perfectly suited for the application. We really like the location of where they chose to mount the core for two reasons.

Being more centered in front of the grill, as opposed to the lower sides like behind a fog light, puts the core in an area where it sees high pressure. This ensures that air really pushes through it and maximizes the cooling by having the best airflow through it.

Its location makes it easy to service and keep clean.

Install was straight forward and one of our easier installs. They make it very easy. It comes with clearly labeled braided oil lines and they have a really good install video on YouTube as well (thanks Rudy). The addition of the cooler kit will require you to increase your oil by one full quart. This is due to the volume of the core. We also suggest making sure that you get all your fittings nice and tight to ensure no leaks.

This is a great performance mod and one we suggest for those who track their cars often or find themselves in a climate where extreme heat is an issue.

So far we have averaged about ~30 to ~40 degF cooler oil temps with this kit. This gives us confidence to push harder. The oil cooler allows us to run thinner oil than we would without it thus freeing up power we can use on the track. We are looking forward to many years of track abuse with this kit.

27WON PRO TIP:

The bracket for the oil filter pedestal installs right in front of the A/C compressor. You will find that a pair of fittings for oil line attachments are very close to the lower bracket to the A/C compressor. We took a Dremel and shaved down this lower section to allow enough room for our AN fitting to be able to turn and tighten without getting hung up.